‘Why are we stopping, Leo?’
She hadn’t explained to Martha and she did so tersely now.
‘A friend of hers, you say. Died here?’ Martha’s eyes filled with tears.
Leo was already out of the car. She trod carefully over the crackle of broken branches. No tape to stop her from moving across the scene today, though she spotted a piece of it, bright against mud. Where the incline grew steeper, she slipped a little and clung to bark. She wedged her feet carefully now, taking one step at a time. Beneath her she could hear the sea slashing against rock. When she reached the precipice, she shunted away dizziness and stared straight down, clinging to a gnarled oak as she did so. A stone ridge met her gaze, peaks of shale and only beyond them, the sea.
‘Leo. Don’t.’ A scream reached her, distorted by wind.
She turned and saw Martha clambering towards her. She waved to reassure her and scrambled hastily back up hill. The poor woman had thought she was about to mimic Isabel. But this was not the spot for mimicry. If Isabel had gone down here, flung by her own or another’s will, her fall would have been stopped by rock, well above sea-level. It was a hunch disproved. An unwanted vision disproved too. It had come to her in a flash of perverse jealousy and out of a searing sense of abandonment that Isabel might have played out the Thelma and Louise fantasy they had nurtured over Christmas with Jill Reid, rather than with her - and taken the fantasy to its fatal conclusion. The lay of the land proved otherwise.
‘Don’t worry,’ Leo put her arm around Martha’s shoulder. ‘I was only checking something out.’
They drove on. Leo was still intent on the road as if some sign might leap out at her and shout, ‘here’. Twice she stopped to climb out of the car and get a good look at the contours of the coast line. Twice Martha came out after her. On the second occasion when the sea suddenly appeared unobstructed by rock at a sharp drop beneath them, the older woman clasped her arms round her shoulders and started to sway slowly. Suddenly she broke into a loud keen.
‘Isabel,’ she wailed pain into the elements. ‘Isabel, Isabel, Isabel,’ and then she crumpled, her legs giving way as her voice rose.
Leo caught her, held her up, and planted a kiss on her cheek as if she were a child. There were no words to use. She helped her back into the car.
A little further, they came upon a tiny clifftop hamlet, complete with a coast guard’s cottage and a squat church which looked as ancient as the hills. Behind it, the horizon had lifted high enough to illuminate an endless stretch of blue-tinged charcoal which was the sea.
‘I’d like to stop here, Leo, if we could.’ Martha spoke for the first time since they had got back into the car. ‘I’d like to go into the church for a moment.’
Leo pulled up on a verge where the road widened a little. She took Martha’s arm and led her through the wooden gate which gave onto the churchyard, then hastened their pace past the ranked graves, their inscriptions half-obliterated by time and weather. The wind whipped at their jackets, made talk impossible, emphasized the silence within the granite walls of the church once they had shut its heavy door behind them.
Martha sat in a pew by the altar and bowed her head as if she would never lift it again. Leo waited, huddled in her own thoughts, until a burst of indignation propelled her outdoors. She sheltered from the gusting wind for a moment in the small porch, then wandered restlessly amidst the tombstones.
The slabs were flint thin and looked as if they would bend in the wind. But many of them had stood here for centuries, mutely outliving their dead in the bleak wildness of the landscape. She paused by a stone and wiped a fragment of moss from its inscription. Edward Bagshaw. Edward. Her father’s name. Her father who had no stone under which to rest to speak his presence to strangers. But he lived on in her memory, nonetheless, perhaps even a little less restlessly now that she had confronted something of the muddle of pain and anger and longing his abrupt passage had left. This Edward, she noted, had not had the luxury of even her father’s lifetime. He had died at a mere age of twenty-three, much mourned by his mother, Mary and father, Edward and his three sisters.
With a quick look round her shoulder, Leo placed a covert kiss on the cold stone and thought of Isabel. The odd thing was that the thick cloud of anxiety which had hampered her movements over the last weeks, perhaps longer, had lifted. A slew of other emotions had come in its place, but that was gone. The worst had already happened.
She walked hurriedly back to the porch. Martha came out as she reached it. The woman’s eyes were moist, but she nodded at Leo. ‘Thank-you for allowing me to stop,’ she said softly. ‘It helps a little.’
Leo drove on with no exact sense of destination, though Pippa’s words hovered in her mind. At this side of the hamlet, the road was slightly wider and offered the occasional passing place as it plunged into a valley only to climb remorselessly to a new height. For a brief stretch, they had dazzling views of the sun setting pink over headlands of yellow gorse and purple-red heather.
On a whim she veered into a narrower track which seemed to dip inland. A mixture of trees and hedges obstructed eye-lines. It was darker here in the shadow of the precipice, inhospitable. As they followed the road something about the lay of the land gave her an uncanny feeling of deja-vu. She pulled up short and looked out the rear window. There were lights at the crest of the hill behind them. A house. She turned the engine on again, something nudging at the corners of her mind. A bend and another twist in the track and it suddenly came back to her. This must be the road on which she and Norfolk had met that roadhog who had knocked off their wing mirror. The fog had rubbed out contours, distorted distances. She had seen the house then, emerging from the mist and disappearing again, like a ghostly presence.
She drove at snail’s pace, willing the huge car to manifest itself once more. And then it came back to her. The man at the wheel. He had been wearing a cap. A chauffeur’s cap? She wasn’t sure. She rolled down the window and let the wind play over her face, breathed deeply.
The road forked now and she paused, slowly took the turn which she thought might lead her back towards the sea. Suddenly she felt Martha shaking.
‘What is it,’ Leo asked softly.
The woman pointed upwards. ‘They’re horrible.’
Beneath the rose-tipped grey of threatening clouds, two buzzards circled, their wings blacker than coal. As she followed their downward passage, a discreet sign came into view, a blue oval with a single gold star, glistening slightly in the setting sun. She drove past it, then braked abruptly.
‘Did you see that?’
‘What? You mean the birds?’
‘No, no. The sign.’ She screeched the gears as she moved into reverse. ‘Look.’
‘The Morning Star Foundation,’ Martha read. ‘Sanctuary. F.F. Hilton, Director.’ She gave her a quizzical look.
‘Morning Star,’ Leo’s voice rose. ‘That’s the English for Morgenstern.’
‘So it is. I should have known that.’ Panic flashed across Martha’s face. ‘Do you think he …? I couldn’t …’
‘I don’t know. But we’re going to check it out.’
The road narrowed after a stretch and seemed to curve back on itself. A dense, towering hedge of blue-green cypress now stalked their passage to the left. Cut into its midst, a grand ironwork gate appeared. Through it, Leo glimpsed the roll of grounds, an eccentric play of trees and boulders and pebbled paths, at the far end of which stood a massive stone structure, lavishly gabled, as if its architecture had been conceived by an austere Kubla Khan lost in infernal dreams, or perhaps some medieval abbot intent on the most stringent of monastic strongholds.
‘Are we going to go in?’ Martha turned from the gate to Leo and back again. Her voice was a quivering whisper. The location seemed to demand it.
‘It doesn’t look altogether welcoming, does it?’
The woman shook her head. ‘But there’s a smaller door on the side and a buzzer.’ Her features were trapped between desire and f
ear.
‘And a car park.’ Leo pointed to a small arrow on a placard wedged in front of a cypress
She followed its direction and the car park emerged a good distance down the slope and on the other side of the road. It too was shrouded by imposing firs. But the smattering of cars reassured Leo.
‘At least we know it’s inhabited. Why don’t you wait here. I won’t be long. I’ll just ask a few questions.’
Martha released a pent-up sigh. ‘If you’re sure I wouldn’t be of some use… If he’s there, how will you know?’
She shrugged. ‘I just want to find out what kind of place it is.’
The air in the enclosure was very still, as if the wind didn’t come here. When she emerged from the seclusion of the car park, she noted that the single track road wound downhill if they continued along it and merged into a panorama of distant farm land. She walked quickly and had almost reached the top of the incline where the road curved left, when she heard a motor behind her. She turned to see a black Mercedes climbing the hill with stately dignity. She squeezed into the bank of the road to let it pass. A capped man was in the driver’s seat. He didn’t acknowledge her presence. Nor did the woman who dozed on the back seat.
A vision of Isabel came to her with sudden hallucinatory force. Her friend had been here. She was certain of it. Isabel had been in that car. And this must be the place Pippa had mentioned.
Leo watched the Mercedes stop at the lavish iron gate, which opened to it with inching remote control. She ran to slip in behind it just before the gates swung shut again, then tracked its passage.
From inside the grounds, the landscape lost some of its bleakness. The sky was high. Rock flowers dotted the crevices of the scattered boulders. Within a circle of small trees, she heard the sound of a fountain. A bald-headed man in a flowing saffron robe emerged from around the far corner of the house. Perhaps it was indeed some kind of monastery.
Now that she came closer, she noticed that the house curved round on itself to form an inner courtyard. At the utmost limit of the grounds, in the shadow of the cypresses, stood two secondary structures, built out of the same pale stone, tinged with a honey glow in the late afternoon light. A large beech arched generously to her other side.
The doors of the house had just opened. A figure in what looked like karate whites was bringing a wheel chair to the Mercedes. The woman was placed into it. Leo ran so as not to miss the opportunity of another open door and a good look at the chauffeur.
She found herself at the threshold of a large, square hall, wainscoted as far as the dado and then painted white. What looked like ancestral portraits decorated its expanse, though none of the faces resembled each other. A wide staircase curved gracefully up to the second floor. To its side stood a wooden counter, chest height, an assortment of leaflets on top of it. Behind, she could see the flicker of a PC. The reception area, she presumed and walked softly towards it.
Randomly, she picked up one of the leaflets, only half-looking at it.
All the activity in the room was by the doorway on the far right. The capped chauffeur was holding the door open. He was smaller than she had presumed, given the size of his head and torso, the ruddy pugnacity of his face.
A bigger man in karate pyjamas pushed the dark-haired woman in the wheel chair through. She was protesting about something Leo couldn’t make out to a tall, slender woman, who was also clad in white. The uniformed woman shushed her with the manner of a stern nurse.
‘We don’t raise our voices here, Helena,’ she said in a hushed tone which carried the authority of its irrefutable command all the way to Leo. ‘You’ll be settled in just a few minutes and then the Director will come and talk to you.’
As she spoke, the woman’s pale eyes landed on Leo and an eyebrow arched in unhappy query. She ushered the woman in the wheelchair through, together with the two men, and closed the hallway door.
Leo looked away, pretended to read the leaflet in her hand. She started. She had seen this leaflet before. Evolution, its cover announced. Where had she seen it?
‘Yes, how can I help you?’
Leo focussed on a face of icy prettiness, pale hair swept back in a knot, yellow-flecked eyes with tiny, glistening pupils, a perfect Grecian nose, raised now, to look down on her.
Leo’s mind raced. ‘I hope you can, Miss…’ She waited for the woman to fill in a name.
‘Heather.’
‘Heather?’ Leo repeated.
‘Yes, Heather. It’s our policy only to use first names here. I’m sure you understand why.’ Cold eyes scrutinized her, seemed to evaluate the cash-value of her clothes, her bag.
‘Of course,’ Leo murmured, though she hadn’t the vaguest idea.
‘Our guests also normally arrive pre-announced. No one else was expected this evening.’ Heather was polite, correct in her bearing. Leo couldn’t place exactly what it was that made her so forbidding. Maybe it had to do with her slow, careful enunciation.
‘I guess I’m not exactly a guest. You’re from California, aren’t you?’
Heather’s nod was brief. ‘I go back to my first question. How can I help you?’
Leo noticed that in the course of this conversation she had been gently but firmly negotiated towards the door.
‘A friend told me about your place and asked me to meet her here. She sent me your brochure. I’ve just arrived from New York.’ Leo improvised.
‘And who is your friend?
‘Oh, haven’t I said yet? Isabel. Isabel Iris, if you’ve got two Isabels.’
Heather’s forehead creased in a parody of concentration.
‘Why not check it out on your PC? That way you can tell me her room number as well.’ Leo gave her an innocent smile.
‘My memory is rather well trained, thank you. I recall your friend Iris exactly. A handsome blonde woman with a murky aura. Troubled I mean. A little like you,’ the woman said it with controlled disdain. ‘It’s a shame she didn’t contact you in time to tell you that she had left us. The Sunday before last, I believe it was. The reason I don’t remember precisely is that I was away that weekend.’
‘Are you certain of that? Did she leave a message for me? Please check it out. It’s a huge way to come.’
‘No message. No need.’
A red light had begun to flicker from the ceiling, just above the reception counter. Before she could ask what it signalled, Heather continued. ‘I have to ask you to go now.’
‘But…’
The door was already open. ‘If you want to book into our retreat, a reservation is required. Places are at a premium. The brochure will tell you that reception is on Friday evening or Saturday morning. And, of course, for a first time guest we need a professional referral.’
‘A professional referral?’
‘Yes. A professional referral.’
Without quite realising she had been ejected, Leo found herself on the exterior stairs
‘There are hotels scattered all over the region.’ Heather gave her a sliver of a smile now. ‘Fifteen or twenty minutes should get you to the first one. But hurry, if you don’t know these roads, it’s best to drive before dark. We look forward to your visit.’ The door closed with a soft thud.
Expelled as deftly as a field mouse by a stiff broom, Leo nursed a rebellious inclination to bang on the door. But it would serve no purpose.
Instead, she walked slowly down the pebbled path and examined the well-tended terrain. Isabel, or rather Iris, had been here until ten days ago, according to Heather’s memory. If that was to be trusted, it meant she had stayed for around two weeks. On the Thursday of the first week, she should have flown to New York. What had prevented her from doing so or at least alerting Leo? And what had happened afterwards?
Leo unfurled the leaflet she had inadvertently twisted into a narrow tube and stared at it. Of course. She knew now where she had seen it before. On the bedside table in the loft. The guest bedroom. She had glanced at it on her first night in London and wondered
whether it was Isabel or a visitor who had left it there.
The tinkling of chimes diverted her attention. A group of people emerged in single file from a hedged enclave at the far corner of the grounds. Each and every one of them wore the white karate garb. Maybe the guests, too, had to shed their usual clothes once they entered the Morning Star Sanctuary.
She stopped to watch the procession for a moment. All of them had their eyes focused on some middle distance which excluded her presence, even as they came close to her. She wondered if any of them had once born the name Morgenstern. She almost shouted it out at the top of her lungs in a perverse desire to see which one looked up.
No, far better to play things by stealth. Tomorrow she would follow in Isabel’s footsteps and book herself in.
On impulse, she turned off the main path. A man in white was turning the earth in a flowerbed. He glanced at her and gave her a vague smile. His face was familiar. It came to her that she had seen it on some poster. Yes. It might even have been in Becca’s room some years back. They only used first names, here, Heather had said. Celebrities, of course.
Leo walked towards the outlying houses. They formed a wall of stone, partly covered by ivy and punctuated by windows. The doors must be on the other side from which she was cut off by the impenetrable hedge of thick cypress. She glanced up and her eyes fell on a second storey window. A woman was standing there looking down at her. She stood with uttermost stillness, her eyes two holes in a face that looked spectral beneath its tangled mass of hair. The sadness in the face was so great that without thinking, Leo raised her hand in a wave.
The woman didn’t respond. For a fugitive moment, Leo had the odd feeling that she had walked into a nineteenth century novel to confront the original mad woman in the attic. Yet there was no caged-animal-like panting here or scurrying or raving. The woman still hadn’t moved. She still stared.
Feeling a chill settle on her which had little to do with wind or weather, Leo walked quickly away. If only she had come here ten days earlier, she would have found Isabel. Isabel, who needed her. Isabel who had eluded her like some will o’ the wisp and now lay dead on a cold slab, her life purloined.
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